


I think I've seen this film before / And I didn't like the ending

by Emjen_Enla



Series: Prompted Works [40]
Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Codependency, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, F/M, Gen, Not Arthur Shelby Friendly, Parentification, Pre-Season/Series 01, Pre-Season/Series 03, Season/Series 05, marriage issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:47:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26236651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emjen_Enla/pseuds/Emjen_Enla
Summary: The truly awful thing about life, Linda was realizing, was that somehow, despite your best intentions it always ended up coming full circle. Or the tradition of Linda Shelby’s life.Written for Peaky Blinders Appreciation Week Day 2: Tradition.
Relationships: Arthur Shelby/Linda Shelby, Linda Shelby & Linda Shelby's Mother, Linda Shelby & Tommy Shelby
Series: Prompted Works [40]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1366669
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	I think I've seen this film before / And I didn't like the ending

**Author's Note:**

> S5 flipped my opinions on Linda and Arthur and then this fic happened. Also the dynamic that Tommy and Linda have is really interesting and I should fiddle with it some more.
> 
> Also please forgive my cheesy Attack of the Clones reference as a nod to my Star Wars days.
> 
> Title from "exile" by Taylor Swift and Bon Iver (because, yes, I am apparently still that person).

The door to the small apartment opened and Linda’s mother stumbled inside bringing with her the stench of alcohol and a deluge of incoherent, drunken mumblings. Ten-year-old Linda, tensed under the covers of her small bed but didn’t dare move. Maybe, just maybe, if she didn’t move Mum would just go to sleep and that would be that.

 _Please._ She begged. _Please let her just pass out and that be that. Please._

But luck was not with her. Luck was never with her. Linda’s mum staggered over to the pallet and collapsed onto it already in a wailing state. The words poured out of her, tumbling over each other in their hurry to get out. The story of how she hadn’t meant to go to the pub, but had somehow ended up there anyway. The story of all the beer and whiskey she’d drank and the strange men she’d kissed. The story of how she’d ended up outside the window of the nice apartment Linda’s father now shared with the young woman he’d abandoned them for, howling in pain and rage just like so many nights before. She was in so much pain. She’d been in pain for a long time, but it had gotten worse since Linda’s father had left.

Listening to her story, Linda began to feel guilty for her resentment. Her mum needed someone, and Linda was all she had now. It was cruel of Linda not to try to help.

“It’ll be alright, Mum,” Linda whispered, hugging her mother like perhaps that would fix everything that was lost. “It will get better.”

She whispered late into the night, promising that things would be better and soothing hurts and fixing problems.

After all, someone had to do it.

~~~~

Linda grew up and got out. The Quakers offered her the out that she needed. They offered a place to start fresh and a purpose to dedicate her life too. Her mum drank herself to death. Linda tried to pretend she didn’t resent the woman.

Years passed and she dedicated her life to the Friends and to the betterment of the world. Life made sense with the Quakers and she was happy.

Then she met Arthur Shelby.

He was drunk the first time they met. Drunk and high. The Peaky Blinders were celebrating some kind of victory and Arthur had wandered away from the festivities. Linda and a friend were on their way back from ministering to an elderly woman and they found Arthur passed out in an alley. Mary had wanted to keep walking, but Linda had stopped and propped him up and coaxed him back to consciousness—it wasn’t hard, years didn’t wipe away all the practice she’d had during her formative years.

“Are you an angel?” Arthur asked when he’d come around. Mary snorted.

“What makes you think I’m an angel?” Linda asked, unable to tell exactly what kind of emotion she felt.

“You look like one,” Arthur slurred. He was vilely drunk. It was almost too much like her mother. Linda almost wished she’d just kept walking. It was a horribly un-Christian thought, and she reprimanded herself for it. After all, wasn’t it her duty to care for those who could not care for themselves? Of course, it was, even if “those” was currently drunken men lying in alleyways.

“I assure you, I’m no angel,” she said. “What’s your name? Where do you live? We can get you home?”

Arthur muttered something mostly unintelligible about brothers and brushed one of her curls away from her face. “You’re beautiful as an angel,” he slurred. In spite of herself, Linda blushed.

That was when Arthur’s brothers showed up. They’d both had a fair bit to drink themselves and John especially was a laughing mess, teasing Arthur for his undignified state until Arthur spluttered with dumbfounded rage and Linda felt required to step in on his behalf. That got her nothing but a mocking laugh and an ill-disguised innuendo from John and a soul-cutting stare from Tommy, who Linda did her utmost to ignore.

Arthur’s brothers hauled him to his feet and Linda thought his brief appearance in her life was at an end when he paused and asked. “Can I see you again?”

John snorted and Tommy rolled his eyes and Linda should have said no. She could feel Mary’s eyes burning to the back of her head telling her to say no, but somehow the words wouldn’t form. “I would like that,” she said. And just like that it was like she had never escaped at all.

~~~~

To be fair, it took Linda years to realize that she’d willing stepped back into the circumstances of her childhood that night. In her mind, Arthur was nothing like her mum. Her mum had been needy and demanding. Arthur was like a helpless lamb—a very violent helpless lamb, but a helpless lamb nonetheless. He needed help and guidance, someone to make sure that he stayed on the correct path and someone to offer him the reassurance he needed when things became too overwhelming.

It wasn’t until years into her marriage that Linda looked at the life she had built with Arthur Shelby at the center of it and admitted to herself that the differences between this and the circumstances of her upbringing were only superficial. Her existence revolved around fixing Arthur, forgiving him for his transgressions, giving him all the reassurance and guidance he needed not to crumble. She had functionally recreated her childhood again with a different person.

She gave him the opportunity to fix things. He did not so she left. She went back to the Quakers, where she had found peace and purpose before and this time she found another man too, one who looked at her and listened like she was worth something as herself not as a bottomless pit of reassurance and answers.

And then he was dead. Killed. Murdered. Rage brought her to Arrow House with the intention of killing Arthur the way he had killed a man who had done nothing wrong to anyone—not that that was anything new, not where the Shelbys were concerned. It didn’t go according to plan and Arthur had the audacity to act like she would still give him all the comfort and absolution he craved afterwards.

She fled the house in the aftermath of that night like a ghost, not convinced she’d be allowed to leave if anyone caught her. She’d just made it to the entry way when a voice called after her. “Where do you think you’re going?”

She froze and turned back. Tommy Shelby stood in the shadows of one of the corners, watching her. He looked tired and for one of the first times that she could recall he did not wear it well. Linda imagined she looked similar. She almost sobbed. She just wanted to leave this hell house and never return, but if Tommy had decided to stop her there was absolutely nothing she would be able to do to about it.

“I’m leaving,” she answered his question, trying to sound more certain than she actually was. “I’m done with this. With all of this.”

Tommy raised a tired eyebrow. “Good luck escaping it,” he said, then turned on his heel and vanished in the bowels of the house, letting her leave unimpeded.

It wasn’t until she was in the car leaving Arrow House behind that she realized that might have been the only time she and Tommy Shelby ever perfectly understood each other, which only made her hope more fervently that he was wrong.

She didn’t think he was.


End file.
